Erica Sofer Bodwell
Washington, DC, 2017
—after Wordsworth
King! You should be living at this hour:
America needs you: she’s burning
with that deepest fire—a never-ending
smoking funeral pyre. Our fear has grown like cancer
cells divide, malignant it seems; Our hubris!
Bring your voice and Gandhi’s steady hand,
remind us justice sits as well as stands.
We are selfish and forget darkness
cannot drive out darkness. Raise us up,
restore sanity to this mirror time.
Still pendulum’s eternal swing, let minutes slow
to crawl so we’ll recall. Come and trumpet: Yes!
This tide can turn. It’s not too late, I swear—
just please, we fall to knees and beg: return.
Erica Sofer Bodwell is the author of the chapbook Up Liberty Street (Finishing Line Press, 2017). Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Crab Fat, Minerva Rising, White Stag, APIARY, The Fem, PANK, HeART, and other journals. She lives in Concord, New Hampshire.
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